ABSTRACT
The relativities of workplace bullying to the more general subject of human aggression are not ones that have been researched extensively and, indeed, much of the literature on both school-based and workplace bullying unwittingly or otherwise portrays bullying as a unique phenomenon that is largely context-specific. Yet even when particular paradigms of aggression are examined closely there will be found parallels that are easily overlooked because of adherence to context specificity. This limitation has parallels in other areas of the study of aggression; for example, the gross differences claimed between human and animal aggression which continue to prevent serious attempts at syntheses (Blanchard, Herbert and Blanchard, 1999). Despite the fact that varieties of aggression have obvious similarities between human and non-human species in that both show offensive attack, defensive attack, play-fighting and predation (of which, perhaps, bullying is a notable human example), there is reluctance to find unifying theories or explanatory models to further research. Similarly, there appears to be a reluctance to view adult bullying as another example of the aggression that humans can inflict on each other.
